


Animus

by aunt_zelda



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Amputation, Backstory, Begging, Bullying, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Class Differences, Death Threats, Demon Deals, Dubious Consent, Dubious Science, Enemies, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Fantasizing, Fight Sex, Fighting Kink, Foe Yay, Forgiveness, Frottage, Grave Robbers, Gun Kink, Gun Violence, Hate Sex, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Torture, Inappropriate Erections, Knives, Mad Science, Mad Scientists, Masturbation, Mild Gore, Misses Clause Challenge, Murder, Murder Kink, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Past Torture, Revenge, Rough Sex, Scratching, Sexual Violence, Threats of Violence, Torture, Violence, Yuleporn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 09:33:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8885743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/pseuds/aunt_zelda
Summary: The life and times of Doctor Anna Ripley. How she got her start and her doctorate, the identities of the people on her list, her work for the Briarwoods, and her fateful interactions with Percival de Rolo. First chapter is canon-compliant, second chapter is an alternate take on the canon ending.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melmillo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melmillo/gifts).



> To melmillo: 
> 
> So, when I saw that I got this assignment I was actually jumping up and down for joy. I'd gone through the letters and found the prompt and thought "I wanna write a treat, this letter is so great!" and made a note to check it out later. And then it was my actual assignment. It was like a Yuletide miracle!
> 
> I spent this fall catching up on the show, enjoying it so much, and especially enjoying the character Doctor Anna Ripley. Everything in your Yuletide letter? Pretty much what I was thinking: I want to know more about her! And yeah, Percy and Ripley's dynamic is fascinating and I wish we'd had more interactions between them on the show.
> 
> I was torn between wanting to just write about Anna's backstory, and writing some morally questionable smut. So I went with both. The first chapter is the backstory, keeping with the canon timeline, and the second chapter is a sort of bonus smutty alternate take on the canonical ending. 
> 
> If you are disappointed with this fic, when author reveals happen please find me on tumblr and tell me so, and I will gladly write you something else. 
> 
> /////////////////////////////////////////////////////
> 
> General notes:
> 
> This fic contains some disturbing imagery, and depicts a violent and highly questionable sexual scene in the second chapter. I have tried to warn accordingly but if I have neglected to tag any warnings you wish I had put in, please let me know and I will add more tags, no questions asked. My goal is to entertain, and warn people ahead of time of any potentially troubling material. 
> 
> (In broad strokes though)  
> Trigger Warning: Doctor Anna Ripley  
> Trigger Warning: The Briarwoods
> 
> Many thanks to brotherkashaw for being my beta.

Anna is ten years old when she first sees a man die.

A local man is crushed beneath the weight of a cart, laden with stones from the quarry. He is crushed and dies instantly, blood seeping into the mud. People scream and carry on and in the rush and confusion to try and move the cart from the man’s body, Anna is left alone, watching everything. She is there when they heave the cart from him, a feat that takes four strong men and one desperate wailing woman – the man’s unfortunate widow – to accomplish. The man is crushed, his chest nearly flat, bones sticking out bright white against the dark red of his flesh. 

Anna watches, and thinks, _If the man had used a device to lift the cart, he would not have died._

It takes Anna two years of frustration and failure before she completes it. The device is simple, but it works. In the village, when carts lose wheels, Anna’s device is produced, propped between the cart and the ground, and holds the weight of the cart steady while men and women replace the broken wheels. 

~*~

Anna is fourteen years old when her classmates put a skeleton in her bed. 

Anna’s parents are not wealthy, but neither are they poor, and she is their only child. Anna’s promise in school and in creating devices attracted attention of prominent citizens in her town, and they proposed sending Anna to a school in a city far away. She has no inherent magical aptitude, but perhaps she could become a doctor of medicine or science, an inventor of more devices, go into service in some noble’s grand household. Talk of laboratories and patrons fill Anna’s head, and she sees her creations springing to life before her, gears and wheels and levers turning, turning, ever turning. 

Her classmates at the school are a mixture of ambitious merchant-class like herself, and a plentiful supply of the second and third sons and daughters of nobility, dumped into the school for lack of a better occupation. Dimwitted, bored, and elitist, they often turn to mild sadism to amuse themselves. Anna, who holds her head high and does not bow or scrape to the likes of them, is deemed “too proud” by their enclaves. 

So, the skeleton. Pilfered from one of the classrooms and deposited beside Anna in the night. They think to frighten her with it, make her scream and cry for her mother and wet the bed like a baby. 

Instead, Anna wakes up to the grim grinning skull, and studies. She studies the eye sockets and puts her fingers into the empty holes. She throws back the blankets and counts the ribs. She remembers the man crushed beneath the cart and presses her hand against the ribs of the skeleton. The ribs are strong, too strong for her to break with her fourteen year old scrawny arms. Yet the cart had crushed that man’s ribcage as if it were made of straw. 

Anna does not cry or scream for her mother. She props the skeleton up in the corner of her small room and sketches it. 

The noble born students return a few nights later, this time with the decaying corpse of a pig. The reek of it wakes Anna, who again studies the leavings of her classmates. She knows she ought to be terrified now, or at the very least be disgusted. She ought to shriek and carry on, but instead she is fascinated. She pokes and prods and sinks her hands into the carcass, soaking her sleeves up to the elbows in blood and viscera. It is cold, it must have died earlier in the day. 

Anna wonders what it must have felt like when it was warm. 

~*~

Anna is sixteen years old when she refuses to select medicine or chemistry as her targeted area of study, insisting on selecting both. 

She will not sacrifice one for the other, will not give up her inventions for the warm wet soft feeling of organs in her hands, nor relinquish the power of wielding a knife over an open wound for the exact measurements of acid and salt water compounds. 

Her teachers tell her she is taking on too much, has become too ambitious. “Too proud,” they call her, when they think she cannot hear them. “Needs to be taken down a peg,” she hears a few of them say.

Anna does not tell them what she truly thinks. She does not tell them that she thinks they are cowards, and that they are running out of things to teach her. She does not tell them that she knows they would not say such things about her were she a boy, or from a noble family, or best of all both. 

Anna holds her tongue, as she imagines cutting out each and every one of theirs from their sanctimonious mouths.

~*~

Anna is eighteen years old when she is awarded two degrees

She becomes both a doctor of medicine and a doctor of chemistry. Many of her classmates have dropped out of the school, and those that have completed their studies have earned only a single degree. Anna has defeated petty rivals, and it’s been years since anyone put a carcass in her bed. (Since they failed to frighten her away, some of the elite students spread rumors that Anna did unnatural things with the skeleton or the pig corpse, and subsequently no fellow student has warmed Anna’s bed in the ensuing years.)

Her teachers, shaken by her swift progress and hungry mind, erect professional roadblocks around the city. Armed with two degrees but no letters of recommendation, Anna cannot find work in the city at all. She confronts the Headmaster, who laughs at her. 

“Some years of struggling will do you good, Anna,” he sneers. “You always said things were too easy here. Well, you are free to find hard work elsewhere. Good luck convincing anyone you’re a doctor, degrees or not, with no family name and no recommendations.” 

Her eyes burn and her mind commits his smug face to memory. She shall remember him as her first true enemy, the first of many she shall face in her life, though at the time she does not know that. 

Anna packs up her degrees and notebooks, loots the school’s laboratories for chemicals and finer tools than she could afford, and leaves the city. 

~*~

Anna is nineteen years old when she first kills a man. 

The roads are long and rough, and she continues onwards into lands unknown to her. Not every village can afford a healer, especially not clerics from the major temples. Doctors without the magical gifts are their only option. Anna hopes to find work in a desperate village, where she can conduct her own personal experiments while making enough money to sustain herself. 

In a dusty inn, Anna meets another doctor on the road. Desperate for someone she can carry on a conversation with about scientific subjects, Anna engages him in discussion over stale bread and watered down ale. He speaks of a nearby village that sent for him, begging for a skilled surgeon. 

“You ought to travel with me until the next village, the road is dangerous for young women traveling alone,” he says, casting a concerned eye over her young face. His eyes dip lower, and Anna resists the urge to wrap her cloak around herself more firmly. 

Anna takes care to leave the inn before him, camping away from the road that night. 

Just before dawn Anna wakes to find the man stealing from her, hands inside her supply bags. He sees her open eyes and lunges for her, knife in hand. She lashes out and kicks his knee, felling him like a tree with a sickening crack from his joint.

He howls, and Anna scrambles for the knife in the dirt. One slice, and he bleeds out with a gurgle, twitching faintly. She crouches down to watch him die, prodding him inquisitively with the blade until he no longer reacts. It was easy, so much easier than Anna had dreamed.

She sketches him, makes experimental slices into his flesh, and makes more sketches. The man’s tools become hers, his doctor’s bag replaces her worn satchel, his rations fill her belly. She strips off his coat, a long sweeping thing with plentiful pockets and a thick lining, and put it on. Anna finds she takes to the coat immediately, feels taller and more confident in it. 

It’s an easy thing to bury the body, digging a pit and dumping it in with the leavings of her campfire, before covering fire and body with dirt. Anna hopes no one will come looking for the man, but even if they do, they’ll find a charred corpse with no clues. The man was a thief and a traveling doctor, it’s likely no one will miss him especially much. 

The body dealt with, Anna squares her shoulders and marches towards the village. She holds her head high and her hands steady. 

“Who are you?” asks the first villager to spot her. 

“I’m the doctor.” Anna says, smiling. “Someone sent for me; I came as quickly as I could.”

She’s lead to a house where a man is stretched out on a low table, bandaged heavily and moaning with pain, surrounded by dozens of worried people. 

Anna rolls up her sleeves, and gets to work. 

~*~

Anna is twenty-four years old when she leaves the road behind her and settles in a city. 

Her experiments and projects require supplies and a stable lab to work in. The coin she’s saved from her years treating farmers and secretive work in larger towns is enough to rent out a workshop. She sets up a cot that grows dusty from lack of use, and gets to work. She works until her fingers blister and calluses form on her palms. She works until sweat nearly blinds her. She works until her supplies are exhausted, then she pays the nearest person to fetch her more. 

Her contacts made from her shadier work contracts, secret surgeries in pit fighting rings and treatments for merchants in underground guilds, they help her acquire less legitimate supplies. Exotic animal bits, rare chemical compounds, fresh corpses. 

The corpses, of all things, are what get Anna into trouble. A local magistrate with designs on the mayor’s seat finds out about Anna’s activities and sends the garrison after her. One of her underworld contacts warns her. Anna barely manages to save her books and the bulk of her tools before being forced to flee for her life. She’s on a boat upriver when she sees the rising smoke from the place she knew as home. The fools torched her workshop and probably didn’t even bother to look inside. 

Sounds of subsequent distant explosions and screaming are a small comfort to Anna as the boat carries her away. The magistrate she shall remember. Someday, someday she’ll return to that pit of a city and have her vengeance. 

~*~

Anna is twenty-seven years old when she is first chased by an angry mob. 

A local cleric to Pelor, a young wide-eyed innocent named Richter Wells, catches her dragging a body to her laboratory and subsequently rouses the entire town. They torch her laboratory, kill the girl Anna had hired to sweep up and run errands, and chase Anna with torches and ropes. 

“Grave robber!” they scream, and “Necromancer!” which Anna privately objects to for its inaccuracy. 

Anna flees down the road, over the river, and into the woods. She climbs a tree and huddles in the branches, clutching her bag of books. The cries of the mob eventually die down, but still Anna hides. Richter Wells is out there she knows, guided by his god’s light. They mean to lynch her, no matter the innovations she’s made with her studies of human anatomy, no matter the lives she could save in the future. They would rather hang her and let her die forgotten and her intellect wasted. Richter Wells, like so many before him, would rather put his faith in the gods than in fellow humans, would rather pray than mend people with his own fingers. 

The night grows cold and Anna nearly freezes to death. She stays awake by fuming over Richter Wells and his sanctimonious posturing. Someday she shall return and make him suffer, show him the extent of her full knowledge. 

It’s not only healing that Anna has learned about from her experiments and studies. She has also discovered quite a lot about pain and suffering. 

~*~

Anna is thirty years old when Alchemist Ozwyn Grund bars her from the great libraries of Tal’Dorei. 

As a member of the Arcana Pansophical he can do that. He also banishes her from the city he calls home, though Anna has already lost count of how many cities she’s been banished or run out of at this point. 

“You go too far,” he tells her, as she stands beside a pile of her belongings outside the city gates. “You reach too high. And you delve into matters which are forbidden for a reason.”

“I am a scientist,” Anna snaps. “I seek knowledge regardless of its location. I am beyond your petty ethical dilemmas.”

“You seek power, madam. And so long as there is breath in my body, I will always put a stop to people like you.” Ozwyn crosses his arms. “If you had magical talent I would rip it from you. Be grateful I am letting you keep your life.”

“You’ve made a terrible mistake, Ozwyn Grund,” Anna spits on the muddy ground. “I shall return for you.”

“I wish you luck, and that this banishment teaches you some humility.” Ozwyn inclines his head. 

The bastard actually sounds sincere about it. 

Anna mutters curses under her breath the entire trek to the next city, hating Ozwyn Grund. Her mind sharpens as she returns over and over to the fact that all the libraries of Tal’Dorei are now closed to her. 

Ozwyn Grund has taken access to common knowledge from her. But there are private libraries in castles and keeps, ancient hoards of knowledge kept by old families. Perhaps her childhood dream of a patronage is her destiny after all. 

Anna’s feet take her northward. 

~*~

Anna is thirty-five years old when the Briarwoods find her. 

She has worked for many patrons over the years, some successful, some disastrous. Anna has gotten very good at knowing when to walk away, when to flee in the night, when to take a potion of flight to aid in an escape. She is cautious, but the money and position the Briarwoods offer is too attractive on offer to refuse. 

Wildmount is cold, colder than Anna is used to, but she adjusts. The Briarwoods’ estates are expansive, their people held in check by fear and respect. The Briarwoods find a use for her, seeking out spies within their castle and torturing information from people. Anna has become very talented, efficient enough to succeed in her assigned duties and also make time to pursue her own goals. Her notebooks fill with detailed notes and sketches, designs for improved tools, ideas for chemical compounds. 

Anna is happy, content in her place at the Briarwood estate. They keep her busy, allow her access to their vast library, and provide her with everything she needs. Anna no longer has to scrape and save for rare materials or pay thieves to steal tomes from libraries for her. The Briarwoods give her whatever she requests. They even give her live subjects for her experiments. 

The live subjects Lady Delilah sometimes observes, seemingly taking notes of her own in her mind. Her inclination is towards magic rather that science, and it doesn’t take long for Anna to figure out what Delilah does with the bodies when Anna’s experiments are complete. 

The best are when the Briarwoods have guests, and decide to keep them indefinitely. While Lord Sylas sates himself on the blood of the strongest, and Lady Delilah drags the bodies away for her secret spells, Anna is given one or two trembling nobles to satisfy her personal curiosities. There is nothing so satisfying to Anna as taking a man who sneered at her obvious common heritage over dinner and slicing into his flesh inch by inch. 

Happiness, though, turns out to be short-lived. 

~*~

Anna is thirty-eight years old when she becomes the enemy of a king. 

King Bertrand Dwendell, their local king, discovers what they’ve been doing on the estates. Some peasant must have fled beyond the estate boundaries and told tales. He marches towards the estates with an army, with spellcasters, to shatter the peace Anna has finally found for herself. 

He names her on his list of people to be killed or taken alive, places a considerable sum of money for the price of her capture. Anna feels vaguely flattered amidst the outrage and aching loss of stability. 

The Briarwoods invite Anna into their innermost circle. They have plans for a city called Whitestone, plans for the local ruling family there, the de Rolos. Anna is promised a bigger laboratory, more money, and years of an interesting and complicated experiment with acid and the unique stone mined in the north. Anna is also promised more corpses and living subjects for her experiments. 

“The de Rolos are a large family. I think we can arrange for one or two of the children to be set aside for your work, Anna,” Lady Delilah purrs. “I know your appetite for spilling aristocratic blood.”

Anna readily agrees to go with them to Whitestone. 

~*~

Anna is thirty-eight years old when the Briarwoods take Whitestone. 

Aided by a tutor, the coup is laughably easy. The others do most of the initial work, slaying most of the family and all of their guards, dragging servants off for more personal entertainments. Anna picks her way through the chaos carefully, darting out with her knife when the occasion calls for it. She goes for direct and fast strikes, not wanting any of her victims to linger for the moment. 

“You leave such lovely shells, Anna,” Lady Delilah informs her, the morning after the initial slaughter. She’s examining one of the bodies on the floor, Anna’s knife marks at precise points. “The others like to rip and tear, render the bodies relatively useless, but you … you ensure future soldiers.”

Anna has seen Lady Delilah reanimate the dead by now. It’s a process she’s both fascinated and repulsed by. 

Lord Sylas enters, wiping his mouth on a handkerchief. “I’ve seen to the eldest girl,” he grins, fangs still showing. “I know you took the eldest boy, and some of the little ones, my love. I dealt with Lord de Rolo. What became of Lady de Rolo?”

“I’m not sure. Her body must be somewhere around here …” Lady Delilah turns. “Anna, did you dispatch Lady de Rolo?”

Anna mentally retraces her steps through the massacre. “I believe one of the others took care of her. She slew several guards beforehand. A formidable woman.”

“Quite. Such a shame there can be only one Lady in this household,” Lady Delilah reels her husband close for a kiss that goes on for an uncomfortably long moment. 

“And what of the boy?” Anna asks, not bothering to mask her eagerness. “The middle boy? He lives, yes?”

Lady Delilah smiles, all teeth and no mercy. “For the moment. Would you like to play with him?”

“I would, my lady, if you have no further need of him,” Anna smiles a merciless smile of her own. “He would be an excellent candidate for several of my … ongoing studies.”

“Then by all means. I shall have the guards bring him to your laboratory. Have you any requests for how he is to be … prepared?” Lady Delilah’s smile deepens. 

Lord Sylas laughs, catching his wife’s hand and pressing a kiss to her palm. 

Anna’s cheeks flush at Lady Delilah’s insinuations, but she shakes her head. “No thank you, my lady. I prefer to do the preparations myself.”

“Excellent. Have your fun, Doctor. Just be sure to keep him alive until we give the word.” Lady Delilah cautions. “We might yet have need of him.”

Anna nods, bows from the waist, and leaves the chamber. She hears laughter as she crosses the hallway, and the sounds of fabric being ripped away from bodies. The Briarwoods have seemingly commemorated their victory in every room of the castle already, so Anna fails to see the point of their continued celebrations. Judging from insatiable they are with one another, one would think they were recently married, not partners of some decades. 

She puts the Briarwoods from her mind for the moment, and goes to her rooms to retrieve her things. The de Rolo boy is waiting for her. 

~*~

Anna is thirty-eight years old when she is properly introduced to Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III. 

The boy is chained to a table, still in ripped finery. He’s just eighteen, Anna remembers that from the reports sent by the traitorous tutor. He was also her first choice for a candidate to be put aside during the massacre if possible. There’s a younger sister somewhere about too, though that was Lady Delilah’s choice. The woman’s desire for a child is apparent to any who spend enough time around her. Anna has never understood that need, to hunger for parentage with the same kind of desperation that Lord Sylas hungers for blood. 

Anna puts that from her mind and focuses. The boy, Percival, looks up when she enters. He has the sense to look frightened already, but not nearly enough for Anna’s tastes. 

“Please … please don’t hurt me …” he begs, his first words to her. He sounds far younger than eighteen, but then, nobles don’t have to grow up quickly. 

He reminds her of her classmates at the school all those years ago, his upper class accent and well-bred bone structure. Anna wonders if he’d have put a skeleton or a pig’s carcass in a fourteen year-old girl’s bed. Perhaps she’ll ask him about that later. 

She reaches down and rips open his shirt, exposing his skin. It’s unmarked, smooth, and very pale. No dark lines from work in the fields, no scars, nothing. 

“You think you know pain, boy?” Anna asks, seizing him by the chin and forcing him to look up into her eyes. “You’ve been hurt, I grant you, tickled by the guards … but you haven’t felt true pain. Not yet.” She releases his head for the moment and goes to her table, selecting her first tool. “But you will, soon enough. You’re very lucky. I’m a doctor, so I know which places to avoid in order to keep you alive, and which places to seek out to make you suffer. You’re going to get a very _thorough_ education from me.” She turns, holding her first instrument aloft. 

Percival stares at it, eyes wide. He’s not crying yet, he’s trying to be brave. It’s almost sweet. Anna is looking forward to breaking him. She’s looking forward to it very much. 

“My name,” she tells him, as she brings the tool closer and closer to his vulnerable bared flesh, “is Doctor Anna Ripley. You can cry, or scream, all you like, but if you address me, you will address me as Doctor Ripley, or Doctor. Do you understand?”

Percival stares at her. 

Anna stabs the blade into his skin. 

He screams. 

She twists the blade. 

“Yes, yes, I understand!” Percival wails. “I understand, Doctor Ripley!”

She withdraws the knife. “Very good.”

Then she stabs the blade into a different part of his flesh. 

~*~ 

Anna is forty-two years old when she hears the deafening bang of an unfamiliar weapon. 

Her guards haul away some clumsy assassin and she puts it out of her mind. That is something to deal with later, when her work procuring chemicals for the white stone experiments is complete. She has so many enemies; it’s not unthinkable that one of them sent an assassin for her. 

The assassin vanishes from jail though, and it begins to gnaw at her mind. The weapon, which her guards describe with halting and unsure words, sounds unlike anything she has ever seen. She reaches out to her contacts and reports return of a strange new weapon, sketched and described as a kind of high-powered crossbow that fires metal pellets instead of arrows. 

While her hands work automatically on the white stone distilling, Anna’s mind races. Such a weapon would require an incendiary component, rotating parts, slots, a trigger … 

At night, when sleep proves elusive, Anna slides her left hand down between her legs and thinks of Percival. He’s a frequent feature of her thoughts when her mind will not let her rest. She remembers him chained to the table beneath her, writhing in agony, his face streaked with sweat and tears. Anna tore Percival apart but he never quite broke, though she tried her hardest. Still, she only had Percival for a handful of days, before his fool of a sister helped him escape. He probably died somewhere in a ditch. What a waste. 

Anna begins to experiment with black powder. More sketches arrive, reports of a white-haired man with two strange loud weapons that can deal incredible damage. 

It’s a brilliant device. Dwarves have only just begun to use black powder for mining operations deep beneath mountains. Using that same concept but smaller, more contained, within one’s hands … it could change the world. 

Such a weapon would be the great equalizer. Widespread weaponry for all, even those without magic. Humans would be able to fell nearly immortal elves with a single shot. The possibilities are endless. 

Her prototypes are clunky and break far too easily. She refines them, pays obscenely for more information from beyond Whitestone, more sketches. 

She finally constructs a working weapon, small and single-barreled, with four rotating chambers. It works though. Anna embeds a chunk of white stone into the handle and enchants it, in case it should ever be taken from her.

~*~

Anna is forty-three years old when she loses her hand in an explosion. 

One moment, she is performing a task like any other, the next there is a horrible thunderous bang and pain sliding up from her wrist and her hand is on the floor and there is blood everywhere. 

It takes all of Anna’s willpower to stagger for a healing potion. The bleeding staunched momentarily, she cauterizes the stump and bandages it. Then she regretfully burns her hand and scatters the ashes. The Briarwoods have become more secretive than before, and she does not wish to remain in the castle for their grand ritual. She will not leave a remnant of herself in the castle for Lady Delilah to work spells upon.

Her work on the stones complete, she packs to leave. The Briarwoods do not let her. They take her weapons and throw her into a cell, telling her she cannot leave with her tales of the ritual and their plots. 

Anna sits in her cell fuming at the Briarwoods and at herself, for letting herself trust in them for so many years. She knew they were monsters, and still she stayed at their sides until it was too late to flee. 

~*~

Anna is forty-three years old when Percival walks back into her life. 

His hair has gone white from trauma. It pleases her so much to know that she had a hand in that, that she left a mark on him so significant that years later he’s been unable to move past what she did to him. 

Percival looks different now, not just in age but demeanor. He threatens her casually and it thrills her to see how he’s grown. There are echoes of her younger self in him that she can see, though Anna does not tell him so. He would likely kill her for suggesting it, the proud boy, but he must see it. 

Delightfully, she gets to see his weapons up close. She analyzes them with sharp eyes, and even gets to see him load the smaller gun. Now, with this firsthand observation, she knows how to replicate them. Let him keep her four-barreled prototype, she can make a better one now. 

Her elation is short-lived. She cannot linger in Whitestone, with the Briarwoods still about and Percival so clearly hungering for his vengeance. It’s a matter of moments to flee him and his companions, dash around the caltrops by the doorway, and escape Whitestone. Perhaps they’ll destroy the Briarwoods. Perhaps dear little Cassandra will stab Percival in the back. Anna is only sorry she won’t be there to see that, if that’s the case. She did so want to see Percival’s tears again.

There will be time enough for that later, if he survives. She recovers her cache of money and supplies in the woods by Whitestone. The road will be hard after these years of protected life with the Briarwoods, but old habits die hard. She did it before and she can do it again. 

~*~

Anna is forty-four years old when Orthax comes to her. 

He whispers in her ears and finds that she is ready for him. Orthax discovers that he does not need to take much time in convincing Anna of his plots for Percival, for the world. Her notes and pre-existing knowledge are bolstered by Orthax’s teachings. She designs and constructs guns large and small and distributes them, first among her followers and then among those with enough coin to satisfy her needs. 

She creates a metal hand for herself, rudimentary at first, but with advice from Orthax it’s even better than her original flesh and bone hand was. She sinks the clawed fingers into a man who tries to rob her, tears him apart, and laughs in triumph. 

Gradually, as Tal’Dorei is ripped apart by dragons, Anna spreads the guns across the land. She returns to that pit of a city she first called home, where the old magistrate is now the Mayor. Anna slays him with her new gun and feeds his soul to Orthax. Psychic damage backfires and crackles up her arm and through her skull, but it’s worth it to see the Mayor’s body crumple at her feet. She has her minions burn the Mayor’s corpse and set his house ablaze, in memory of a burned workshop everyone else has long since forgotten. But Anna remembers. Anna will _always_ remember. 

Next is her old Headmaster, still teaching in his old age, leaning on a cane and half deaf. He doesn’t even remember Anna, though she screams her name into his fat face over and over again. She scrawls her name on his blackboard in his blood before finally putting the old man out of his misery with a shot to the skull. Anna is tempted to burn the school as well, but settles for dragging the Headmaster’s body to the laboratory and displaying it in a grisly fashion for his students to discover come morning. 

She listens to Vox Machina – dear Percival keeps her pilfered gun close – and crosses the sea, in search of these powerful artifacts called Vestiges. With enough hired muscle at her back and guns in their meaty hands, it’s easy enough to take the Cloak from the warm, bloody body of the woman in Ank’harel. 

On a whim, Anna finds a few tinkerers in the city and sells them the blueprints to the pistols. Orthax whispers that this will drive Percival mad and cackles with delight. Anna thinks Percival is mad already, but she very much wants to see him driven further into insanity. In this, as with so much else, she and Orthax are of one mind. 

When she slides her hand between her legs at night it’s still Percival she thinks of, but now his hair is white instead of brown. She imagines him chained to her table again, but now there are old scars on his chest, scars she put there the last time. She’ll have to cut him at a different angle, to make new distinct marks without obscuring the old. Orthax hungers but Anna will make him wait. She’s going to cross every name off her list before finishing with Percival. The boy will have to beg her, as he did all those years ago. 

Anna is forty-four years old and she has become Death itself. Her work will outlive her, will change kingdoms and shape the world for generations to come. 

Anna thinks she will live long enough, to witness the beginnings of the world changing because of her.

Percival and his companions put a stop to that. 

~*~

Anna is forty-four years old when she dies. 

Percival arrives too early, but steps onto her trap just the same. Anna had wanted to save him for last, but with him so close, and Orthax whispering in her ear, she decides to destroy Percival now. 

His allies are strong, but the appearance of Kynan startles them. Percival focuses squarely on Anna. Her hired thugs fell him, but a spell brings him back. His allies heal him over and over again, but they begin to drain themselves of their power. 

Orthax becomes corporeal and lunges for Percival. As much as Anna would like to see Orthax rend him limb from limb, she would much rather do this herself. 

The moment stretches impossibly, the noise of fighting fading away, leaving only her and Percival. Her hair is wild and there is sweat and blood dripping down her face, but she’s reloaded and aiming squarely at Percival.

“I forgive you,” Percival says, staring her down. His fingers fly over her gun, reloading it with practiced movements. “But I cannot let you leave.”

She’s not certain whether it’s Orthax or herself who’s more disgusted with that. How dare Percival, after everything they’ve been through, all these years, how dare he attempt to eject himself from their bond? She saw her name on his gun, back in Whitestone. One cannot simply _forgive_ the hatred and loathing it takes to burn a name onto a weapon like that while in partnership with Orthax. 

Anna doesn’t need, or want, his forgiveness. She wants her vengeance. She wants Percival bleeding and dead at her feet. She wants to pry her gun out of his pretentious grasping fingers. Anna would have preferred to wrench it from his warm living hands, before snuffing out his life with her reclaimed gun, but this will have to do. 

She aims, fires, and rocks on her heels with the recoil. 

Anna watches with delight as Percival finally falls.


	2. Chapter 2

Anna is forty-four years old, and in another world, things are different. 

While his allies are busy with Anna’s minions and the black powder trap, Percival chases Anna to the cave. She had time to prepare a teleportation circle with the mage before sending him off to deal with Vox Machina. Firing wide and wild, Percival steps into the circle just as she finishes the incantation. 

Lights flash and sound flickers in and out. Anna lands hard on the ground in Wildmount. The ruins of the Briarwoods’ old castle are just up the hill, and beneath a hidden cellar door is a cache of supplies Anna stored there months ago in case. 

She takes a step towards the ruins, and Percival tumbles out of the air. 

“Anna!” he yells, flailing about, gun in hand, disoriented. 

At this range, outrunning him is impossible. Anna tackles Percival to the ground and levels her gun at his face. 

Percival fires wide, striking a nearby tree. He brings the gun up and deflects her gun, and with another blow sends it skittering off out of reach. 

Anna strikes him in the face, closed fist, nearly snapping his spectacles. 

Percival manages to struggle to his feet and punch her in the stomach, knocking the air from her lungs. He tries to bring the gun up to her head but she strikes at his elbow, knocking his aim off. She stomps on his foot and tries to knee him between the legs, but Percival twists out of the way. Her clawed prosthetic hand scratches at his chest, ripping his jacket and parts of his shirt. Percival steps back and loses his footing, toppling over and taking Anna down with him.

It’s almost silly, how they’re fighting with brute force, with fists and knees and feet. Anna starts to laugh, even as she pulls out a knife from her belt and tries to drive it through Percival’s neck. He rolls clear, manages to fire at her hand and shatter some of the mechanisms. Another shot and the straps fray and tear. Weeks of work destroyed in a matter of seconds. 

“That was expensive!” Anna snarls, as the useless hand slides off of her arm. 

Percival laughs now, trying to bring his gun up to her face. “That’s what I said about my last gun.”

Anna headbutts him, which makes her dizzy but is worth it to knock the smirk off his face. She tries to wrench her old gun from his hand, but she can’t force his fingers off the handle. 

He drives his elbow into her sternum and knocks her over, shoves her onto the ground and forces her face into the dirt. Then he pins her legs with his weight and her flailing hand with his arm, and holds her in place. 

She struggles, but without her prosthetic, without her gun, without the ability to grab a knife, she’s helpless. Orthax is gone, she can feel that somewhere Vox Machina have contained him or banished him. She can’t reach his power, can’t use it to fling Percy into the trees. 

“Is this your forgiveness?” Anna pants, heart racing in her chest. She twists her head, but can’t quite get a look at Percival above her. “Feels like vengeance to me.”

“Shut up,” his voice is strained, from the running and screaming and fighting. Percival touches the gun to Anna’s head, the barrel glancing off the side of her ear.

Anna struggles uselessly, then freezes. 

She feels Percival’s stiffening cock pressed against her, a warmth so unlike the cold gun he has jammed against her temple, and yet so similar too. 

Percival flinches briefly – he knows she’s noticed. 

“Fascinating,” Anna squirms ever so slightly, as if to confirm what she knows to be true. 

“Stop,” he snaps. He’s not begging, not yet. 

“Was this something else I taught you, Percival?” she asks, unable to keep the delighted speculation from her tone. “Was I the first to truly stir you?” 

Percival growls, disgusted, but he does not move away. 

“You want your revenge? Why don’t you just _take it_?” Anna shifts her hips up as best she can.

Percival groans before he can catch himself. 

Anna smirks in triumph. He’s still very much a boy, for all his posturing. She doubts he’s had much experience with women in the intervening years. He’s too proud, too frightened, too haunted by memories of his torture. It’s unlikely he paid a whore to guide him through a comprehensive lesson. Or perhaps his tastes run rougher and darker than even a whore would allow. Perhaps Anna has ruined him except for things like this: his gun to her head and his cock hard at her back. 

“You’re disgusting,” he hisses. 

“Maybe so. Why don’t you feel how _disgusting_ I am, Percival?” Anna wrenches her hand free and manages to grasp his left hand, pushing it to the space between her legs. There’s too much fabric between them for him to feel her wetness, but the implication is clear. 

Slowly, almost hesitantly, Percival unbuttons her trousers. Anna parts her legs to allow those clever fingers beneath her undergarments. He touches her gingerly, gasps audibly when he finds how wet she is. 

“I don’t bite down there. Why don’t you have a rummage?” Anna asks. “What’s the harm in a little experiment?”

He recoils. “I’m going to shoot you,” he snaps, voice shaking. 

“Oh, I know, Percival. But with what?” Anna retorts. 

He cracks her on the skull with the gun. It’s not a particularly strong blow, she doesn’t even black out, but it’s enough that she knows it will ache tomorrow. That is, if she lives until tomorrow. 

“Make up your mind, Percival. Are you going to fuck me before, or after?”

 _That_ rips a cry of horror from his mouth. “What … I would never … you’re _vile_ …”

“Oh, so before, then,” Anna twists in Percival’s grasp and rolls over, so she’s facing him now, her back flat on the ground. “Not my favorite position, but I can work with it.” She grins and angles her hips, pressing up against him once more. 

Anna gets to see his conflicted look now, torn between his hatred and his arousal. 

“Make your move, Percival.” Anna dares. She’s not entirely certain he’ll have the nerve, but she wants to find out. 

He stares at her for a long moment. Distantly Anna hears birds, the wind in the trees. It’s not a bad place to die, she supposes, so near the ruins of the Briarwood estates. This is the last place she was truly happy. 

“… you’re disgusting,” Percival says again, reaching down to pull at her trousers and push them down to her knees. “You’re boring … you’re so dull … I _hate_ you …”

He lets go of her hand briefly and she fumbles with his belt, yanking it loose and grasping for his cock. She finds it and tries to find the right angle, trapped on her back as she is, unused to this position. 

“Damn you,” she grunts in frustration. 

By way of reply, Percival shifts the gun to the side of her head again. 

It doesn’t frighten her, as she knows it ought to. It only brings the moment into sharper relief, gives her the clarity she needs to wrap her leg around his hips and pull him to her. 

Percival gasps, sliding into her. The hand not holding the gun paws at her chest, hikes up the fabric of her shirt and bares her breasts.

She twitches and struggles, trying to coax him into some kind of rhythm. 

“Did you dream about this?” she gasps out. “Tell me you did.”

“No,” Percival grunts, not looking her in the eye. “Never.”

“Liar.” Anna gets her hand under his shirt and rakes her nails down his spine. She prays she draws blood. More than anything, Anna wishes for a knife to cut him properly. 

Percival _whines_ and that nearly sends her over the edge. He grabs her hand and presses it down against the ground. 

“You did. I heard you, moaning my name in the night while you slept. I listened to you so much, Percival. I’d wager I know you better than some of your companions.”

Percival glares down at her and thrusts harder.

“I dreamt about you,” Anna admits, hoping to coax details out of him. “Not like this, of course. I dreamt you were back in my laboratory, chained to my table. That’s where you belong, Percival, under my knife, at my mercy –”

“You don’t have a shred of mercy within you, Anna,” Percival growls. “You’re a monster.”

“And yet you can deign to stick your cock in me.” Anna moans at a particularly vicious thrust. “Careful, Percival, you’re hilt-deep in a _monster_. You could find yourself corrupted all over again.” A nasty thought alights in her mind. “Did you let Orthax fuck you too?”

Percival’s hips stutter and he slumps, gasping in quick succession. 

Anna shifts uncomfortably beneath his weight. Percival still has a tight grip on her wrist. “If you’re not going to help me, give me back my hand so I can do it myself.” 

He slides free of her and does up his pants shakily. “No, I’ll … I can …” he dips his hand between her legs again. “It’s only fair …” he mutters, more to himself than her, and concentrates on his work. 

Being the focus of such intense study, especially from Percival, helps to crest her over the edge. She rides her orgasm out and screams, because she’d rather that than moan at his touch. Her hand reaches and grips his arm, nails sinking into his skin. He yelps in surprise more pain, but it’s enough for her.

They let go of each other hesitantly, slipping back into their clothes and their wary stances. Anna sees her gun and her knife on the ground, and sees Percival’s gun at his side within reach. 

“What am I to do, Anna?” Percival says at last, breaking the silence. 

“You’re asking me?” she raises her eyebrows. 

“You know me. As much as it pains me to admit it, you know me. And I know you. Are we meant to kill each other? Orthax will feast on us both, if we do that.”

She has been worrying at that possibility. “… perhaps.”

“The guns … I cannot let you continue to spread them around. I meant to have mine destroyed after my death, but now you’ve loosed so many into the world …” he sighs heavily. “That is a quest for another day, I suppose. After we deal with the Conclave.”

“You could let me go?” she proposes, knowing he can’t.

“I couldn’t, not after all this. My friends will know.”

“Say you killed me.”

“They’ll know I was lying.”

She snorts. “You need employees, not friends, Percival. People you can pay not to ask questions.”

He shakes his head, clearly lost in thought. 

“I have a proposal,” Anna says, not wanting to leave Percival to decide her fate. “Two options. Either we try to kill each other again, here and now, and who knows what Orthax will try … or …”

He glances at her warily. “… or?” he regretfully takes her bait. 

“We form an alliance. I have Cabal’s Ruin, I have guns, you and Vox Machina have many other Vestiges. I have Whisper too, unless your people have killed poor confused Kynan while we’ve been here.” Anna does hope Kynan lives, the boy has such potential. 

“An alliance for what?”

“To destroy the Conclave. The Cinder King might kill you, or me, or both of us. If not, I take you everywhere I sold the guns and the blueprints, and you do with them as you please.”

He glares. “I can’t trust you.”

“I can’t trust you either, Percival.” Anna folds her arms. “If you like, we can go back to trying to kill each other afterwards.”

Percival snorts. “If we enter into this alliance, I have … conditions.”

“And they are?”

“First, we remove Orthax’s influence from you, and any of your guns. That might require destroying one of the guns, or some kind of magic.”

Anna nods. 

“Second, you don’t tell anyone about what happened here. Or what you did to me in Whitestone.”

Anna considers this. “Very well. They’re going to ask, you know. What will you tell them?”

“Nothing.”

“And that will satisfy them? They’re going to figure it out.”

“This won’t happen again. Ever.”

Anna smirks. “We’ll see about that, Percival.” 

He shudders. “Can you get us back to Glintshore?”

“Yes. The teleportation circle will work one more time today.” Anna crouches down. “I am reaching for my gun, slowly.”

Percy keeps his hand on the handle of his gun, as she does so.

“You know, that’s an old prototype. I could craft you a much better one now.” Anna taps her new gun. “This one deals psychic damage.”

“Lovely,” Percival keeps his eyes on her. “Let’s go back.”

Anna steps into the circle with him, and recites the incantation. 

Anna is forty-four years old, and she’s going to live.


End file.
